Where No One Goes
by Crazed Badger
Summary: Valka, Hiccup and Heather are planning on making peace with the Hooligans of Berk, they have everything planned out, then a mysterious stranger appears and everything changes for them. Co-written with "The Core of Justice". AU where Hiccup is living inside the Alpha's nest with his mother.
1. A Cunning Plan

**WNoG 1: A Cunning Plan**

 **A/N: This story is not connected to my other stories, it was co-written by me and "The Core of Justice". The plot was his idea, he contacted me and asked me to write it, so, as you can see, I did. Hiccup is living with his mother in the Alpha's nest with his twin sister Heather and a couple of other dragon riders.**

 **Dreamworks owns HtTYD, I own nothing.**

Hiccup woke up that morning freezing, his twin sister Heather had woken him up by taking the fur of his bed while he was sleeping, he woke up with his fingers numb and with drool frozen to his face. Being cold was, of course, a fact of life living inside an iceberg, it was barely tolerable, water had to be heated in a cup by dragon fire and it froze again before you could drink it most the time. But this was the only place people could live alongside dragons, and that made it all worth it in the eyes of the dragon riders.

Hiccup walked down to the mess hall, feet stinging with pins and needles, there was a group of seven dragon riders sitting around a large table on stone benches with fireworms crawling around underneath it, everyone was eating fish, as usual.

"Hey Hiccup! How'd you sleep?!" Heather taunted.

"That was you?! Gods! I can't feel my fingers Heather!"

"Should have gotten up when I told you to! Mum wants to see us after breakfast! Something about another nest!"

Hiccup sat down next to her, holding his feet above the fireworms to warm them up. "Really? Is there another Alpha?"

Heather shrugged. "Don't know, Mum just told me to tell you she wanted to talk to us. Probably isn't an Alpha, she'd send more than three of us."

"Three? Wow, Heather, I thought you could count. Well done for trying, but it goes 'one, _two_ , then three.'"

"Yes! Well done Hiccup! You can count to three! I'm impressed! But Uni is coming too. That makes three."

"Does Mum know he's coming, or are you just sneaking him along?"

"Course Mum knows about it. She asked for him especially."

"Then does she know you two are dating?" Hiccup asked, intentionally loud.

"It's not that serious."

"Heather! How could you say that?" Uni asked jokingly. "I thought we had something."

"Hey Uni." Hiccup greeted.

"Hey 'Iccup, you hear about the mission?" He asked sitting down between Hiccup and Heather.

"Yeah, what's going on with it?"

"Don't know, something about Whispering Deaths I think, a new breed maybe. Your mum called them Red Deaths."

"Could be a swarm burrowing into the nest." Hiccup suggested.

"Or an entire nest filled with them, like, an entire underground labyrinth leading to the Alpha's chamber." Uni yelled excitedly.

"Why don't we just ask Mum?" Heather asked, pointing out hers and Hiccup's Mum walking through a side tunnel.

"But I haven't eaten yet." Hiccup complained.

"Well eat then." Heather said, throwing a salmon into a pot underneath the living blanket of fireworms and walking through the tunnels with Uni.

"Why is it only us three?" Uni asked Heather.

"Less people means less weight, which means less vibrations, which means less Red Deaths trying to kill us." Heather guessed as they walked into a wide room with a table and map in the centre of it. Valka was standing over the map.

"Ah you two, you're here. But where's Hiccup?"

"Hi Mum, Hiccup's coming, he slept in a little. Came down to the mess hall a bit late." Heather replied.

"Oh, that's fine, we can wait."

"Hi Valka." Greeted Uni.

"Hello Uni, how's Sunray been?"

"She's gotten much better, she's been flying around the nest all morning."

"Great to hear it. How've you been lately?"

Hiccup came running down the tunnel towards the room, he slipped when he tried to turn into the room, but regained his footing before he fell over. Living your entire life in an iceberg makes you very sure-footed.

"You ate quick." Heather said.

"Fireworm crawled in the pot, ate it before I could." Hiccup puffed.

"Ok, everyone come here, I only want to explain this once: There is another nest about three hours flight from here by Nadder," Valka informed them, circling an island on the map then crossing it out, "do not go anywhere near it."

"Why?" Uni asked.

"Baldur came back from a scouting mission two days ago, said there was a massive dragon living in the nest, called a Red Death, it's a very aggressive breed of dragon that preys on other dragons, if it notices you, you're dead already. It controls a herd of dragons that are constantly attacking nearly every Viking settlement in the archipelago."

"So if we aren't going to kill it, why are we hearing about it?" Uni asked.

"This is a peaceful mission, we want to call a truce with the Hairy Hooligans on Berk, maybe even get some of them riding dragons with us, once we do that, then we'll destroy the Red Death, you cannot attack the nest without every man on Berk in the air or every single one of you **will** die. If the Vikings spot your dragons before you land, pass by and come back later, if you're known in Berk as a dragon rider, they will not listen to you. Dragon riders are almost always exiled, Hel, in some tribes, even just showing mercy to a dragon can get you executed."

"So you want us to go off to Berk and convince probably the most stubborn, meat-headed tribe of Vikings to forget everything they know, because it's wrong?" Asked Uni. "How long do you think we'll survive? Five, maybe ten minutes."

"The Hooligans only fight dragons, they only ever kill other people when they need to." Valka protested.

"You literally just told us that we could be executed by them for not killing dragons."

"I said in some tribes, not all of them."

"So in your mind, how do you think this could possibly play out?"

"You go there, tell them you know how to get to the dragon's nest. Chief Stoick will probably want to talk to you after that, he's obsessed with it, tell him you found a way to train the dragons. Tell him some crazy story about a magic spell that makes them more docile and ask if you can train some of his men to fight against the Red Death. He will probably put aside his hatred for dragons to kill the greatest enemy to his people."

"Probably? If this goes wrong, we're all screwed, you realise that right?"

"Yes."

"We need a way to make our appearance less..." Hiccup paused trying to think of the right word to use. "Well we can't just fall from the sky one day, people will start asking questions and trying to get us back home, we need a good reason not to leave."

"What if we masquerade as dragon hunters?" Heather suggested. "We could sail right in, say we're running out of food and ask if we can stay. During the night, we free the dragons and say that someone freed them in an attempt to ruin our business and go with Mum's plan from there. We could stay until we find our dragons, so we can stay as long as necessary, and we would have an excuse for leaving." She explained.

"That's brilliant... but we're a bunch of teenagers, how could anyone believe that we managed to capture _three_ dragons that no one has ever even seen?" Uni pointed out.

"Mm, fair point."

"Say you can do magic maybe, if they don't believe you, use your tricks in the arena." Valka said.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, use your magic to "repel" the dragon, no one on Berk has found out about eels yet, just keep the eel under your jacket. A dragon pins you to the floor, show it the eel and it'll jump back without you doing anything, that would certainly impress them."

"That would work, anything we're forgetting?" Heather asked. Secretly Hiccup was a bit jealous of his sister, she was always the better liar, she'd think of the situation from all angles, come up with an excuse for every problem and weave them all together seamlessly. She was always the one who worked on undercover missions like these, Hiccup was on expeditions mostly.

"I don't think so." Valka said.

"Great! We'll set sail first thing tomorrow! How long will it take to get there?"

"Heather." Hiccup said.

"Yeah?" She turned around, eyes wide with excitement.

"What are we setting sail _on_?" He asked.

Heather's face fell when she realised her mistake.

In a nest full of rideable dragons, there isn't much need for a boat.

 **A/N: The first three or four chapters will be uploaded bi-daily, but it will probably slow to once a week after that.**


	2. The Valkyrie

**WNoG 2: The Valkyrie**

 **I own nothing, unfortunately.**

The boat was easily the hardest part of the plan. Hiccup and Heather were over the ocean searching for dragon hunters, they needed to get onto the boat, take down the hunters and dispose of the bodies. But first, they needed to _find_ a boat, it had been over a week since they had made the plan and the dragon hunters had fallen off the map, no trace of them. The group had even started flying in the day, trying to lure them out, still nothing.

"Hiccup, this isn't working, maybe it would be easier to just say we were attacked and wash up on their shore. Much less preparation, we can get this done quickly."

"Heather, you know as well as I do that people will get suspicious of the random strangers who are trying to change how they live, we need to look like professionals, like we know what we're doing or we won't be listened to."

"I know Hiccup, but we could still pull it off. We could just show them some stuff so they _know_ that we know what we're doing."

"But it's too convenient, 5 Ps remember."

"Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance, I know that Hiccup, but we have to do this every day until someone finally shows up, that could take months."

"Let's just get the rounds done and. and go home. We don't have that much further to go. That's our last island up ahead." Hiccup said, pointing to an island in the distance. "I'll race you there!" Hiccup challenged.

"No way."

"Why not? Chicken?"

"You have a Night Fury, I'm not going to race."

"Fine." Hiccup said, flying away from Heather towards the island.

* * *

Uni was waiting at the entrance for Hiccup and Heather to come back, he was waiting to tell them the great news, he was sitting down wrapped in a bundle of furs when Toothless and Windshear flew in.

"Didn't find anything today, again!" Heather complained.

"Great news then: we did. Some idiot dragon hunters saw Sunray flying around outside the nest, followed her straight here. They docked like, right outside and got off the boat, then walked inside following her, got turned into a sticky red puddle in seconds." Uni told her, sounding a little too happy for comfort.

"So we have a boat?" Hiccup asked with a massive smile on his face. "Thank Thor for that."

"Should we leave now then?" Heather asked, eager to go.

"Tell Valka you're leaving, she has food and packs ready for you." Uni told us. "I'll take the dragons to the boat. Can you grab my pack for me?"

"Sure." Heather and Hiccup both answered, running towards the map room. When they reached it, Valka was already there with three leather bags.

"You going already?" She asked. "Where's Uni?"

"Down in the boat already, he's getting the dragons in. I'll bring his pack down." Heather said.

"Ok. Now, Hiccup, there's a pouch of ginger in your bag if anyone gets seasick and a few knives in Heather's, only for emergencies of course. There is enough food in there to last the trip and two extra days' worth in case you go off course, and then there's just all the standard stuff."

"Thanks Mum." Hiccup said, taking his bag and Uni's while Heather took hers.

"Heather, take this along with you, it'll definitely impress the smith." Valka said to Heather, handing her what Hiccup liked to call his "plasma cutter". It was a canister of Night Fury gas inside a jar of water with a pipe leading off it, Hiccup had created it.

"If he doesn't burn down the smithy first." Heather said, only half joking.

Meanwhile, Hiccup had slid down one of the many tubes around the nest and was down by the boat with Uni. Uni was keeping the dragons out of the cages for now, he didn't see a reason to put them in the cages just yet. Apart from that, no one knew where the keys were to the cages, that's what Hiccup was doing, looking for the keys around the boat.

"I can't find them!" Hiccup yelled.

"Oh no," Uni said to himself. "Keep looking!" He told Hiccup. Gods this would be disgusting. He had an idea where the keys might be.

Uni walked across the ice shelf to the entrance of the cavern. There was the familiar red stain on the ice... and there was the body, it was barely recognisable as a person any more. Just a disturbing pile of gore. He walked up to the body, and it skidded across the floor, like someone had kicked it. Uni jumped backwards and slid across the ice. He immediately felt stupid for thinking it was a draugur when a Speed Stinger skidded to a stop over the body and started eating, pulling off bits of meat, three more sped in and started eating. And the worst part of it all: the flesh pile was jangling, the keys were on the body. Uni walked forward very slowly, trying not to startle them, they hissed quietly and eyed him as he crept forward.

Where was the leader? It knew Uni, if the leader was here, he would able to walk straight in.

He still crept forward. Looking at the dragons, they still weren't attacking, but they still hissed, Speed Stingers were known to be aggressive if you stole their food, so he kept his head back and stayed as far back as he could, trying desperately not to look like was going to eat it. He reached into the pocket of the body and the Speed Stingers looked ready to attack. He quickly grabbed the key and stepped backwards, the Stingers still watched him as he walked away and out into the sunlight.

"Hiccup," Uni said, his voice shaking, "I found the keys!"

"You're bleeding! What happened?" Heather asked, running off the boat towards him. He looked as his sleeve, it was matted with blood.

"It's from the body. I'm fine." He assured her.

"What? Body? What body? Did something happen to the dragons?"

Uni was breathing deeply. "The dragon hunter... he had the keys... when he died... had to touch his body." Uni gagged as he walked towards a worried Hiccup. "Found the keys."

* * *

A few hours passed and they were in Berk's waters, they hurriedly put the dragons in the cages when they passed the stone guardians, an escort ship sailed out to meet them halfway.

"You three, best behaviour, you need to stay quiet until we come down again." Hiccup told the dragons quietly.

"Ahoy, what's ya' business here?!" A man boomed from the deck, shaking the deck as he walked. He was built like a jötunn and carried two jagged scimitars across his back.

"Dragon hunters. Pleasure to meet you, sir." Heather spoke up. "We've come to Berk for business, we heard about a dragon nest nearby and thought your chief could point us in the right direction." She explained.

"Where's the rest of you?" He asked, barely acknowledging her existence.

"No one else, just us three." Heather replied confidently.

"Bullshit! I know there's more of you, you three are just kids, you ain't even sailing around by yourself, much less catching dragons. What're you up to?!" He asked gruffly.

"Nothing! We're just here to hunt, nothing more."

"Then you won't mind me going below deck, will you?" He walked below deck to the dragons.

"Sir! Stop!"

"Why, you hiding something? Who's down-" He was interrupted by Uni's dragon, the Siren, spitting a glob of amber at the man's foot.

"You've got dragons down there!" He screamed, stumbling up the stairs.

"We're dragon hunters, muttonhead! What do you expect?!" Uni yelled.

"You've gotta go, leave the dragons here, get off the boat." He told us, panicked.

"We are not leaving these dragons, they took months to track and we are not returning empty handed."

"Suit yourself!" He yelled, jumping overboard.

"What was that about?" Hiccup asked Heather quietly.

"No clue, Berserkers have quite the reputation for being a bit loopy. Do you think we should we keep going?" She answered.

Hiccup hesitated. "Yeah, if something's going on we should find out what it is?"

They sailed into the dock and got off the boat as the sun was setting. They walked into the village, it was strangely quiet. They were right outside the biggest building in the village and there was still no one in sight. But Hiccup could have sworn he heard someone whisper the words "ripped to bits".

"Hey," The three of them looked around for the whispering voice. "Hey, over here. Get inside." They saw a blonde girl with braids poking her head around the door waving them over.

"Where is everyone?" Hiccup asked in a normal voice.

"Shhhhh, shut up. They'll notice you. Just get inside." A bright streak flew through the sky, there was a white circle flying over Berk. "Get inside or you're dead." The girl said, they ran inside and they heard the door click behind them as it locked. "I'm Astrid. Who are you?" She asked.

"Where is everyone?" Heather asked.

"Some _idiots_ sailed in with dragons on board, good as gone, every time it happens the village gets raided by dragons and the boats get burnt to ashes. What are your names?" She told them quietly.

A shout went up on the other side of town. "Night Fury!"

They found Toothless, "Heather, I need to go save the dragons! Stay here." Hiccup yelled.

"Save them?! You're with _them!_ " The girl screamed.

"Oh no no no, not like that, we need to save this shipment of dragons or we're good as dead." Heather lied. Hiccup burst out the door and ran towards the boats.

"Idiot! I'll get him, don't worry." Astrid ran out of the house after him, staying out of sight of the dragons above. Purple blasts began falling from the sky on the far side of the village, setting houses on fire and destroying Berk's defences. Hiccup didn't notice the destruction as he ran to the boat. He got straight onto the boat and jumped below deck, Astrid had only followed him to the docks before the boat was shaken by two Night Furies and "The Valkyrie" smashing onto the deck, destroying it. She heard Hiccup scream.

"Dragon hunter scum!" A new voice said, Astrid didn't know who it was, it must have been The Valkyrie, it must be able to speak.

"Wait! I'm with you! I'm with the dragons, we're friends!" She heard Hiccup explain. Was that true? That couldn't be true, could it? He was working with the dragons.

"Lies, if they are friends, why are they in cages?" The Valkyrie growled.

"It's an act, I'm a dragon rider. Look, I have the keys here. Me and him, we're friends." Him and who?

"Then free him, let's see you do it, test your friendship with this Night Fury. If you are who you say you are, you needn't worry, do you?" He was friends with the Night Furies? He was the dragon rider! He was the one destroying Berk! He was a traitor to his own kind! No, she was jumping to conclusions, he must be lying, a Night Fury would kill him where he stood, no one could ever befriend a dragon.

"So you really are his rider? Tomorrow, midday, meet me on the sea stack on the western side of the island."

Astrid couldn't believe it, she ran.

Five dragons, a traitor and a fallen angel flew out of the boat behind Astrid.


	3. He Never Jokes, Run

**WNoG 3: He Never Jokes, Run**

 **I still own nothing.**

 **Having Toothless would be fun.**

 **Haiku disclaimer.**

Astrid was running, but not the run of a coward, no, Astrid's run was the run of a person who had places to be. Astrid was running to the armoury, she was getting her bow and she was killing The Valkyrie. A normal person may think things through a bit more, track the dragon, map the area and lead an ambush on the dragons, but Astrid was a Hooligan, and the traditional Hooligan's plan was: "Get something to kill the dragon with and go kill the dragon with it" and Astrid was nothing if not a traditionalist.

Astrid picked up the heaviest longbow she could find from the rack and ran outside with it, she loaded a Hooligan's arrow into the bow (i.e. A metal ball the size of a baby's head on the end of a plank of wood) and tried to pull the string back with one arm. The string barely moved. Astrid instead tried laying down and holding the limbs of the bow with her feet and pulling back with both hands, the string moved back to the top of her kneecaps, she quickly lined up the shot and released, the sound of the Hooligan's arrow ripping through the air was heard by half the village, the half that didn't hear that, heard Astrid swearing from the pain of having a longbow string scrape off all the skin on the front of her shins. Everyone else heard The Valkyrie screech in pain and then crash land in the forest less than a half a mile away. Of course, if half heard the arrow, and half heard the Astrid, it didn't leave many people in the "everyone else" category. This meant, when Astrid asked if she hit it, no one in the village had any clue what she was talking about, but Hiccup knew, so did the dragons, and the Valkyrie knew about it especially.

* * *

Hiccup marvelled at the three new dragons, Toothless happily squirming and trilling like a hatchling underneath him, evidently delighted that he was in the company of his own kind. In the dim light, Hiccup could see that two other Night Furies looked slightly different to Toothless; one was more muscular, much more muscular, almost comparable to Stoick. While the other looked thinner, rigid in flight, almost like someone recovering from Speed Stinger venom, it must have been an older dragon, yet it didn't look aged. And finally the white dragon, three sets of wings: two small sets, each wing barely the size of a Nadder's footprint and one giant set, with a wingspan so wide that it put a Nightmare's to shame. Its body was very long and thin, thinner than Toothless', but it more than made up for it in length, easily doubling Toothless' length and then some. The same could be said about its rider, he was tall man, even by Berk's standards, yet barely had any muscle, his legs were skinny and his arms had less muscle on them than even Hiccup's.

There was a horrible tearing sound, almost like a yak hide being ripped in half, which pulled Hiccup out of his thoughts a fraction of a second before the white dragon screeched in pain and started tumbling down towards the ground. The two other Night Furies that Hiccup was flying with dove after it, one grabbed the dragon's back and the other flew underneath the falling dragon, pressed against its underbelly and holding it up. They stopped tumbling but were still losing altitude. As the dragons neared the ground a shout went up, the dragon on the bottom flew out from underneath the other two and levelled out beside them, the dragon's rider jumped off the glowing dragon onto the gliding Night Fury as it swerved away. The top dragon slowed as much as possible before releasing the glowing body, it tumbled across a small clearing and came to rest next to a large tree. Hiccup flew down after them, landing only a few metres away from the injured dragon.

Hiccup jumped off and worriedly ran towards the downed dragon, from the light the dragon was giving off, he could see that there was a gaping hole in the wing membrane, luckily there hadn't been much damage to the bones of the wing, but the hole would still need to be patched with leather for a month at least. Apart from its wing, the dragon was more or less unscathed. Hiccup let out a sigh of relief. Hiccup heard the rider running towards his dragon from behind him.

"Is she okay?" The rider asked, running towards the dragon.

"The dragon's wing should heal, but it won't be able to fly for a while. I, uh, I can make a false wing membrane to cover the hole until it heals. I just need some leather and you can get flying." Hiccup answered, this happened quite often back at the nest, so it was necessary for every dragon rider to know how to repair a wing. The dragon rider looked relieved. He started fiddling with his pockets.

"Hang on." He pulled a jar of clear gel out of his pocket and stepped forward to the dragon's torn wing, rubbing a small handful over the wound. The dragon's glow brightened wherever the gel touched, Hiccup stood there, gawking as he watched the skin on the wing knit back together. After only a matter of minutes, the entire rip had healed.

"What is that stuff?" Hiccup asked, dumbfounded.

"Nature's Tears." The rider said, showing Hiccup the jar. "Made of mint and rosemary oil. Remarkable healing properties and pretty easy to make. Keep going, get back on."

"Shouldn't we wait? If you keep going, you could injure your dragon." Hiccup warned.

"Not as injured as she would be if a search party finds her." The rider said. "Besides, Lightning Strikers are built for high speeds and, therefore high speed collisions. She's fine. Get back on your dragon. We'll keep going."

"I need to get back to the village." Hiccup said, worrying that someone would notice his absence.

"No, you don't. We're staying at my camp."

"I have a group back in Berk, if I don't get back and someone notices I'm gone, it'll blow my cover." Hiccup explained. The rider thought for a moment, bobbing his head from side to side.

"Come here; rub some of this on your arm. It looks like a burn, but doesn't hurt as much." He told Hiccup, handing him the jar of Nature's Tears. "Don't get it in your eyes, under your arms or on your testicles, hurts like Hell, trust me. Now, I'm going to drop you off near the boat. Rub some ash on yourself and try to look hurt when you get back. I'll throw you off your dragon if you want some help; get some bruises, more realistic, you know?" He said, without a trace of a jest in his mind.

"I'll be fine." Hiccup said, uneasy. He scooped a small amount of the clear gunk out of the jar and started rubbing along his forearm, he couldn't feel anything and started to doubt if it was doing anything. "What's your name by the way?"

"Zyon, I'm kinda like the human alpha of the group, or co-alpha I guess. We both have the same power over the pack, except, you know, she could eat me if she wanted to, or seriously injure me... or blow my head off with explosives any time I annoy her." He said, trailing off. "Just like any good marriage really. Get on your dragon…" He paused for a second "and leave the harness undone."

"What? Why?!"

"'Cause I can't push you off if you're strapped on, can I?" Zyon said, climbing onto his dragon, as if it were perfectly reasonable. Hiccup tried to protest, but Zyon's dragon took off, leaving Hiccup on the ground, staring at the white streak in the sky, flabbergasted.

Hiccup started to stumble around in the dark, trying to find his dragon, around him he heard the other four dragons take off. His forearm began to sting a little. He found Toothless and strapped himself into the saddle, splitting off from the rest of the dragons as they made their way to Zyon's camp.

As he flew over Berk, Hiccup rubbed his stinging arm, the gel had started to make his arm feel very hot and it was getting painful. Hiccup felt something firmly bump against his calf, he looked down at a skinny hand reaching up from beneath his dragon, it gave a little annoyed grunt, then unclipped the metal fastener that held Hiccup into his saddle, it then grabbed Hiccup by the foot and pulled him off his saddle. He fell a metre before being grabbed by a dragon's claw, the dragon slowed almost to a halt, gliding down to the ground, Hiccup expected to drift down and land smoothly, which is why he was so shocked when the dragon, rather unceremoniously, dropped him the remaining four metres. He fell, quite perfectly onto his boat.

Zyon laughed, it was mean, but it would help Hiccup in the long run, well, that's how he thought about it at least. Hiccup would likely disagree.


End file.
